Twice a week he called on the Mertons, and much of his talk was
Australia. Susan was grateful. To hear of the place where George would
soon be was the nearest approach she could make to hearing of George.

As for Meadows, he gained a great point, but he went through tortures
on the way. He could not hide from himself why he was so welcome; and
many a time as he rode home from the Mertons he resolved never to
return there, but he took no more oaths; it had cost him so much to
keep the last; and that befell which might have been expected, after a
while, the pleasure of being near the woman he loved, of being
distinguished by her and greeted with pleasure however slight, grew
into a habit and a need.

Achilles was a man of steel, but he had a vulnerable part; and iron
natures like John Meadows have often one spot in their souls where
they are far tenderer than the universal dove-eyed, and weaker than
the omnipotent. He never spoke a word of love to Susan, he knew it
would spoil all; and she, occupied with another's image, and looking
upon herself as confessedly belonging to another, never suspected the
deep passion that filled this man's heart. But if an observer of
nature had accompanied John Meadows on market-day he might have
seen--diagnostics.

All the morning his eye was cold and quick; his mouth, when silent,
close, firm, and unreadable; his voice clear, decided, and
occasionally loud. But when he got to old Merton's fireside he
mellowed and softened like the sun toward evening. There his forehead
unknit itself; his voice, pitched in quite a different key from his
key of business, turned also low and gentle, and soothed and secretly
won the hearer by its deep, rich and pleasant modulation and variety;